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The impact of cereal killers on food security

25 March 2022 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Charl Devenish

Prof Liezel Herselman Inuagural Lecture — At the inaugural lecture were from the left: Prof Danie Vermeulen, Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Prof Liezel Herselman, Dr Adré Minnaar-Ontong, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences and Subject Head of Plant Breeding, and Dr Molapo Qhobela, Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Strategic Partnerships and Societal Impact.

Prof Liezel Herselman, Academic Head of the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS),) delivered her inaugural lecture on the Bloemfontein Campus this week (24 March 2022). The theme of the lecture was the ongoing battle against destructive cereal killers.

With 28 years of extensive experience as a researcher, her work focuses on marker-assisted disease resistance breeding in wheat within a South African context. When she joined the UFS in 2004, Prof Herselman decided to apply her research expertise in marker-assisted breeding to the problems faced by wheat producers in the Free State and Northern Cape. The Free State is one of the major dryland wheat production areas in South Africa, while irrigation wheat is produced along the major rivers in the Northern Cape.

Protection against fungal diseases

Concentrating specifically on Fusarium head blight (or wheat scab) and three rust diseases – leaf rust, stem rust, and stripe rust – she has done work to provide wheat plants with ‘tools’ to protect themselves against these fungal diseases.

According to Prof Herselman, there are many genes available in different wheat genotypes and related grass species that provide excellent protection against various races of these diseases. “Some of these genes provide protection or resistance from the seedling stage, while others provide resistance at the adult plant stage. We are thus aiming to combine as many of these genes as possible into a single wheat cultivar, without compromising yield and bread-making quality.”

She says the genes are combined by making crosses between resistant and susceptible cultivars or lines. Conventionally, through a time-consuming process, the incorporation of these genes is tested in the greenhouse and field by infecting plants with the disease to see which plants are resistant and which are not.

They can, however, follow the transfer of these genes to newly developed lines by applying molecular markers. Prof Herselman explains: “A molecular marker is a genomic fragment linked to the gene, which we can follow in the offspring we create from the crosses using different DNA techniques in the laboratory. This enables us to select new wheat lines that contain the highest number of resistance genes. The identified best lines are then used in further crosses and/or released as pre-breeding lines to commercial wheat breeding companies.”

Impact on food security

Her research has an impact on society by providing food security to both commercial and small-scale producers, as well as the end users of wheat (people buying bread and other wheat products). As researcher, it is also important for her to send out students to the workplace who can continue with this task in future.

Prof Herselman believes that when cultivars with fungal-disease tolerance or resistance are released and used by producers, it not only reduces the cost of spraying against diseases, but also increases yields by protecting the crop against fungal diseases. “We live in a world where the population is increasing daily, but land available for agriculture is not increasing and some areas are even lost due to urban development. Increasing yield in available production areas will thus have a positive impact on food security,” she says.

Besides contributing to the country’s food security, she takes pleasure in every aspect of her work. Although she misses the hands-on part of the work as academic head of the department and getting her hands dirty, she still enjoys managing the different research projects (from the conceptualisation phase to data analysis and publishing of results). The part she loves the most is to see the growth in her postgraduate students – from the moment they enter the laboratory for the first time until the day they walk out of the laboratory with their degrees.

“It adds purpose to my life knowing that I have made a difference in a student’s life and equipped him or her with the necessary tools to be successful in the marketplace. Being able to share your knowledge is a gift, but with that gift comes a lot of responsibility as well. I am, however, up for the challenge,” concludes Prof Herselman.

News Archive

Address by the first Inaugural President of the Central SRC

2005-08-03

The UFS Central SRC

Address by the first Inaugural President of the Central SRC of the University of the Free State, Mr Tello Motloung on Wednesday 3 August 2003

The Chairperson of the UFS Council, Judge Faan Hancke,
The Vice-chancellor and Rector of the UFS, Prof Frederick Fourie
The Vice-Rector Student Affairs of the UFS, Dr Ezekiel Moraka
The Presidents of the main campus SRC and the Vista campus SRC
Colleagues in the Central SRC, campus SRCs, students and fellow South Africans

Please receive my heartfelt revolutionary greetings

Vice-chancellor and rector what I bring here with me assisted by facts, is just the work of my imagination. Like a love letter addressed to a sweetheart miles away, even though you do not know how she feels, what she wants to hear, and do not even know what she looks like.

I value speech as just an honest intimation, that’s why I got into a habit of establishing a dialogue with people, looking at each other’s face, and persuading one another of what we are saying.

Vice-chancellor, today marks an important milestone in the history of the existence of the UFS. Today reflects the confidence and trust that students of the UFS have placed in us. They are confident that the Central SRC has both the will and the capacity to take our university forward as we confront the challenge of transformation.

Students are confident that they are correct to trust the Central SRC as the principal agent of change in our university that is genuinely committed to the objective of building a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic university. We need to frankly ask ourselves, as CSRC members, whether are we up to all these challenges?

All Central SRC members have to understand this fully, internalize it, and ensure that everything we do, does not betray the confidence and trust of students, or disappoint their expectations. I say this knowing that all Central SRC members have committed themselves to serve the students of the UFS, black and white, and no one among us (CSRC) needs any special lectures about this central commitment.

The UFS should be an omnibus, welcoming everybody on board. But we should be a bus with a clear direction. We will certainly lose our way if we, as an institution, don’t have a clear road map spelling out where we are heading to.

There should be clear guidelines on the role of students in the transformation process. Students should also be viewed as role players in transformation along with the University management, and not just opposing forces. There is no right time, other than this one, to move away from the politics of opposition to politics of transformation.

However, we need the support of management to do so. The University should value the role and contribution of student leaders, hear our legitimate claims and consider them as part of political and policy decision making.

Vice-chancellor and Rector, it remains our task to ensure that the UFS is transformed into an institution that is seen to be playing a vigilant role in developing students academically, intellectually, socially, culturally, politically and otherwise. The process of transformation is not ending tonight, it is just beginning tonight.

Judge Hancke, Prof Fourie, Dr Moraka, fellow students and fellow South Africans, I lead students at this university with a sense of pride and duty, and I know very well that I lead men and women, students who are all determined that we reach our destination safely and on time.

A navy divided within its ranks will be destroyed and vanquished by the enemy, but the navy united in purpose and action, loyalty and commitment will not sink but sail on to victory.

It is befitting to mention that every drop of my blood is telling me that the UFS is my home. I firstly became a student here, I became the SRC treasurer in my first year here, I became the deputy president here, and I became the first president of the Central SRC of the UFS.

Therefore you should never doubt my commitment towards the transformation of this university. To paraphrase what was said by students at another institution, “If there is no UFS in heaven, then I am not going.”

Let me conclude by thanking my ancestors for teaching me that even if I wined and dined with kings and queens, I am not a king myself, so I should not turn my back on people who made me what I am today.

Most importantly, I would like to thank the Almighty God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for giving me time and power to lead this university.

It will be theoretically irresponsible if I ended my speech without indicating that “Only a Kovsie knows the feeling”.

I thank you.

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